Tired of freezing laptop

[Pat Brown]

Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Pat Brown wrote:
>   
>> I'm getting very tired of having my PC freeze up almost every time I go 
>> online. I'm using Hardy on a Compaq Presario C700, with a Broadcom B43 
>> wireless card. I apply every update the update manager detects. I've 
>> been running Hardy since it was released and this problem is ongoing. It 
>> doesn't seem to matter what I am doing online, eventually it will freeze 
>> and require a soft boot using CTRL+ALT+Backspace. I've run some of the 
>> tests people have suggested but the results mean nothing to me - I 
>> posted them once and never heard any comments on whether it showed anything.
>>
>> I also can't watch YouTube videos at all on Konquerer. Sometimes I can 
>> watch them on Firefox 3.0.1 but it too will shut down without warning.
>>
>> I recently picked up an almost new PC which I was originally going to 
>> install Ubuntu on. Now I'm reconsidering and think I'm going to go back 
>> to XP so I can watch videos and surf without this hassle all the time. 
>> I'll keep Ubuntu on my laptop because I like it, but I don't like this 
>> problem and until it's fixed I need an alternative that's more reliable.
>>     
>
> I didn't see your original thread, but a couple things to start with...
>
> The freezing. You said ctl-alt-backspace brings the system back...that 
> restarts X, not the system, so this would mean that it's actually the 
> GUI you're restarting and not the system, is this accurate?
>
> What shows up under /var/log/system.log? And what is output from dmesg?
>
> Does the entire interface freeze, or do you still have *some* control? 
> It would be handy if you could run something like the system monitor or 
> in a terminal run "top" to see if they freeze up as well, because if 
> not, it *might* show if a process is eating the CPU at %100 or if the 
> swap is suddenly growing. I don't know if you have this capability but I 
> diagnosed a problem like that before using a second computer that I 
> secure-shelled into (if your system is running sshd, the 
> opensshd-server) and ran top on from another system. The interface on 
> the workstation froze, but background processes were still running fine 
> so I could see the offending process (and kill it from the remote terminal).
>
> The flash issue. I had this problem not long ago and as I recall my fix 
> was the flashplugin-nonfree package. Using synaptic, do you have the 
> package "flashplugin-nonfree" installed? I believe I could play  on the 
> YouTubes once I had that package installed.
>
> -Bart
>
>   
Okay, I guess I'm restarting the X system. I have some keyboard ability, 
but that's all. If I knew some commands to run a terminal that way since 
I can't access it through the GUI, I could check processes and see if 
something was hogging the system, but I don't know the commands. I have 
the output from dmesg, but it's after restarting X. I would love to know 
how to get to a place to kill a process - and know the name of the 
process. I'm assuming it's Konquerer that's doing the CPU hogging since 
it's always Konquerer that freezes X.

When I have full keyboard access I can see Konquerer in the system 
monitor. It's called konquerer [kdeinit] --si which means nothing to me, 
I'm afraid. I'm doing my best to learn Linux/Ubuntu but I'm still very 
green.

The flashplugin-nonfree appears to be installed already.

How do I get to a terminal when my X is frozen? I'll try that next time 
it freezes.

Pat Brown
pat.mysterywriter at gmail.com
http://www.pabrown.ca/

L.A. Heat, now hotter than ever!